High Prices and High Quality

Our discussions last meeting for ManTech is about pricing of materials. Nowadays, people usually go for high prices because they believe that high cost of materials means that it's of very good quality. Maybe, that common belief is established because of the immitations sold in various places like greenhills and other "tiangges".

When you go to places like "tiangges", you can see a big difference in the prices of the "original" from the "immitation". I know somebody who bought a perfume, and it costed him only P800 compared from the P3500 original perfume. When he used it, the scent of the perfume only lasted about 15-20 minutes. Maybe, they just poured 1/8 original perfume and filled the rest with water.

There was another incident involving with shoes. A friend of mine bought Fake Nike shoes. He was checking how long it will last. After 3 days, the "check" seal on the Nike shoes fell off. It turned out that the "check seal" was only glued to the shoes. High Prices of products doesn't always mean that its of high quality.


Sometimes, it depends on the products sold itself and its use for us. Example, when you have a laptop and you want to download something in the internet via Wi-Fi in a coffee shop like Starbucks because its transfer rate is really fast but it costs P100/ hour. Why not just rent in a computer shop that costs P20/hour and bring a Flash Disk and store that application in your laptop.

Another example is choosing the right music media device for you, and your options are either buying an ordinary mp3 player which has a capacity of 1gb and costs Php1,800 or an Apple iPod™ which has a capacity of 20gb and has a price tag of Php15,000. Apple iPod™ says that they can store more than a thousand songs. But can somebody really listen to all those songs? They say that you can store data in an Apple iPod™ but there is such a device like an external hard drive which can store 60gb of memory and only costs Php3000.


Apple iPod™ is a very expensive device compared to an ordinary mp3 player. Apple dictates its price to be expensive but its not that durable and its quality is for those who want to experience luxury when it comes to listening music. Companies often dictate high prices to create an image for their product that they are superior than others. It's up to us to use our judgement for purchasing products according to our preferences and needs.


ManTech Blog 4 for September 24